We knew an exclusive digital public library was coming and to
many it makes good sense for civic communities to mix their digital and physical
offer to members. Now Bexar County, Texas, has announced its plans to become
the first totally digital US public library.
It is claimed that the initiative came to County Judge Nelson W. Wolff after he
read Steve Jobs’s biography. He claims he was inspired to believe that future
generations will have little use for hardcover or paperback renditions. As a result
the new ‘BiblioTech’ system plans to make thousands of e-books available for
county residents via both an online service and at a 5K square foot building
and importantly offer no physical books. Not only will members be able to check
out books onto their own ereaders, they will be able to borrow one of the
library's 150 e-readers.
This bold step is possible
because Bexar today doesn't have a civic library and currently pays and uses San
Antonio city facilities. This is a new library with zero legacy inventory to
deal with and therefore it can be born totally digital.
Bibliotech is in somewhat a great position to push this proposal
forward, but some would question whether the $3.7 million in currently spends
with San Antonio would be better deployed in working with them to create mixed environment
which would serve both communities and offer the richest of both worlds. In
establishing a single library entity and restricting the material on offer they
may be seen by some as playing to one small community at the expense of the
bigger community. Idealology over logic, personal ego over civic responsibility. To some, it would make more sense to build a state digital library, which would share cost and inventory and obviate building lots of little ones with their
own unique systems, inventories and costs.
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